Robots Now Available. Call (833) 497-6268 to order for 2026 harvest pricing!
Robots Now Available. Call (833) 497-6268 to order for 2026 harvest pricing!
Harvest is now underway and folks are getting after it a little earlier than we’ve seen the last few years. Corn’s ahead of the five-year average and beans aren’t far behind. Yields are looking good so far and always a welcome sight. But this is also the time of year when grain bins turn into the most dangerous spot on the whole farm or operation.
Last year, Purdue’s Ag Safety and Health Program counted 48 confined-space accidents in agriculture. Twenty-two of those were fatal. Nearly half involved grain entrapment. The University of Minnesota Extension lays it out simple: once grain starts flowing, it can pull a grown adult down to their knees in about four seconds. In twenty seconds, they’re completely buried making self-rescue nearly impossible. Eight different fire departments responded when an Illinois farmer was trapped in August of last year and it still turned into a recovery mission. Most cases happen right in the middle of where this year’s corn and bean crop is coming out of the field today; Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska.
“No task is worth a life. The safest grain bin entry is the one that never has to happen.”
This is exactly why the Grain Weevil robot was built. When the grain is moving, the robot gets in and does the dangerous work no person should have to do — load after load, all season long.
For large commercial grain facilities, slow is not in their vocabulary. When grain is moving, bins need to turn fast, crews need to stay on task, and every hour of downtime has a dollar amount attached to it. One robot inside a 48-foot bin does real work. Two robots working in coordinated tandem? That changes the math entirely.
The Grain Weevil Dual Robot setup pairs two robots on a single frame, running synchronized passes across the bin surface, maximizing throughput for high-capacity operations. No overlap. No gaps. No person stepping into the bin. Supreme Rice is already running two sets of dual robots in their 48-foot bins and reporting that what once took hours of manual labor now gets done faster, safer and with no bin entry required. For grain elevators, co-ops and large commercial operations, that kind of throughput isn’t just efficient, it’s a competitive advantage.
Supreme Rice has been milling rice in Crowley, Louisiana — the self-proclaimed Rice Capital of America — for generations. Their operation runs large-scale commercial bins, and like every rice operation, they know the inside of a grain bin better than most. They also know exactly how dangerous it is.
When they brought in their first set of Grain Weevil robots, the question wasn’t whether the technology would work. It was whether it would work in rice — one of the more demanding commodities for any bin management system. The answer came back quickly. “Overall, the robots work very well in rice,” their team reports. “They move a large volume of rice efficiently and help reduce the need for people to enter the bin.”
They now run two sets of dual robots simultaneously in a 48-foot bin, with additional units staged outside and ready to rotate in. A leveling job that once consumed hours of labor — and required workers inside the bin — is now handled by the fleet. Team members stay on their regular jobs. Nobody climbs in.
“It helps improve overall efficiency by allowing team members to stay focused on their regular jobs instead of entering the bin for leveling work.”
The robots have found uses beyond leveling, too. Supreme Rice has used them to help feed the sweep auger with more rice saving significant time, and as a gravity-feed solution when a sweep or gate underneath a bin goes down. Improvised? A little. Effective? Absolutely.
After their initial trial, seeing what the robots were capable of made the decision to expand easy. “Seeing how they are not only efficient but effective as well,” they say. “Having more is a big plus.” The bottom line, put plainly: “Having to get people in the bins — that’s the hardest part. Now we don’t have to.” That’s the whole mission.
SOURCES:
USDA Crop Progress Report
KCHA News
Purdue University Agricultural Safety and Health Program
University of Minnesota Extension
AgWeb
